this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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Surveillance creep is once again striking in the age verification debate. This is happening at the FCC this time.

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[–] IHeartBadCode@fedia.io 12 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I'm still trying to figure out how systemd has anything to do with this. Any configurable level user database could have implemented this. /etc/passwd has your "Real Name" in it as well. Finger protocol could have been selected to expose this. Literally there's dozens of different places the age thing could have been implemented. The maintainers of systemd decided to be the first. Hell, MidnightBSD just added a daemon to implement it.

Likewise if you're informed enough you also know there's a flag to explicitly block it and ways to patch it out. While I'm typically a Slackware and sysvinit type of person, there's nothing unique about systemd that enabled the shitty law California passed. And fi you really care about privacy, how about less gloat and more information about ways around it, like this fork.

You'll go a lot further educating folks how to get around the things you perceive as bad rather than whatever your original comment was. The entire point is to get people ... on your side.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 8 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

That the developers chose to add it at the same time as all the age verification stuff was starting is too much of a coincidence. It shows that some developers in important roles will go along with age verification. The systemd thing can be argued the way that it has been but it's the beginning of the slippery slope

[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

Exactly. The point is not the technical details of the implementation. The point is that their act of capitulation endorsed the concept.

As Free Software developers, they had an ethical obligation to resist and they didn't.

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 4 points 10 hours ago

That the developers chose to add it at the same time as all the age verification stuff was starting is too much of a coincidence.

It'd be weird if they added it before the laws were passed, but not that strange to implement it afterwards, but before the deadline.